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What we don't know about Europe's Muslim kids

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    When I was a child,
    I knew I had superpowers.
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    That's right.
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    I thought I was absolutely amazing
    because I could understand
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    and relate to the feelings
    of brown people,
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    like my grandfather,
    a conservative Muslim guy.
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    And also, I could understand
    my Afghan mother, my Pakistani father,
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    not so religious but
    laid-back, fairly liberal.
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    And of course, I could understand
    and relate to the feelings of white people.
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    The white Norwegians of my country.
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    You know, white, brown, whatever,
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    I loved them all.
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    I understood them all,
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    even if they didn't always
    understand each other,
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    they were all my people.
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    My father, though,
    was always really worried.
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    He kept saying that
    even with the best education,
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    I was not going to get a fair shake.
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    I would still face discrimination,
    according to him.
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    And that they only way
    to be accepted by white people
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    would be to become famous.
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    Now mind you, he had this conversation
    with me when I was seven-years-old.
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    So while I'm seven-years-old,
    he said, look,
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    so its either got to be sports,
    or its got to be music.
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    He didn't know anything about sports --
    bless him -- so it was music.
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    So when I was seven-years-old,
    he gathered all my toys, all my dolls,
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    and he threw them all away.
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    In exchange he gave me
    a crappy little Casio keyboard
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    and singing lessons.
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    He forced me, basically, to practice
    for hours and hours every single day.
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    Very quickly, he also had me performing
    for larger and larger audiences,
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    and bizarrely, I became almost
    a kind of poster child
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    for Norwegian multi-culturalism.
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    I felt very proud, of course.
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    Because even the newspapers were starting
    to write nice things about brown people,
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    so I could feel that
    my superpower was growing.
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    So when I was 12-years-old,
    walking home from school,
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    I took a little detour
    because I wanted to buy
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    my favorite sweets called Salty Feets.
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    I know they sound kind of awful,
    but I absolutely love them.
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    They're basically these little salty
    licorice bits in the shape of feet.
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    And now that I say it out loud,
    I realize how terrible that sounds,
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    but be that as it may,
    I absolutely love them.
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    So on my way into the store,
    there was this grown white guy
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    in the doorway blocking my way.
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    So I tried to walk around him,
    and as I did that, he stopped me
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    and he was staring at me,
    and he spit in my face,
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    and he said, get out of my way
    you little black bitch,
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    you little Paki bitch,
    go back home where you came from.
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    I was absolutely horrified.
    I was staring at him.
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    I was too afraid to wipe
    the spit off my face,
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    even as it was mixing with my tears.
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    I remember looking around,
    hoping that any minute now,
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    a grown-up is going to come
    and make this guy stop.
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    But instead, people kept hurrying past me
    and pretended not to see me.
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    I was very confused
    because I was thinking,
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    well, my white people, come on!
    Where are they? What's going on?
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    How come they're not
    coming and rescuing me?
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    So, needless to say,
    I didn't buy the sweets.
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    I just ran home as fast as I could.
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    Things were still okay, though, I thought.
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    As time went on, the more successful
    I became, I eventually started attracting
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    harassment from brown people.
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    Some men in my parent's community
    felt that it was unacceptable
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    and dishonorable for a woman
    to be involved in music
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    and to be so present in the media.
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    So very quickly, I was starting to become
    attacked at my own concerts.
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    I remember one of the concerts,
    I was onstage, I lean into the audience
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    and the last thing I see is
    a young brown face
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    and the next thing I know
    some sort of chemical is thrown in my eyes
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    and I remember I couldn't really see
    and my eyes were watering
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    but I kept singing anyway.
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    I was spit in the face in the streets
    of Oslo, this time by brown men.
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    They even tried to
    kidnap me at one point.
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    The death threats were endless.
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    I remember one older bearded guy
    stopped me in the street one time,
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    and he said, the reason
    I hate you so much
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    is because you make
    our daughters think
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    they can do whatever they want.
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    A younger guy warned me
    to watch my back.
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    He said music is un-Islamic
    and the job of whores,
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    and if you keep this up,
    you are going to be raped
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    and your stomach will be cut out so that
    another whore like you will not be born.
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    Again, I was so confused.
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    I couldn't understand
    what was going on.
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    My brown people now starting
    to treat me like this -- how come?
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    Instead of bridging the worlds,
    the two worlds, I felt like I was
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    falling between my two worlds.
    I suppose for me, spit was kryptonite.
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    So by the time I was 17-years-old,
    the death threats were endless
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    and the harassment was constant.
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    It got so bad, at one point my mother
    sat me down and said, look,
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    we can no longer protect you,
    we can no longer keep you safe,
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    so you're going to have to go.
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    So I bought a one-way ticket to London.
    I packed my suitcase, and I left.
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    My biggest heartbreak at that point
    was that nobody said anything.
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    I had a very public exit from Norway.
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    My brown people, my white people,
    nobody said anything.
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    Nobody said, hold on, this is wrong.
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    Support this girl, protect this girl
    because she is one of us.
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    Nope. Nobody said that.
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    Instead, I felt like,
    you know at the airport, on the baggage
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    carousel you have these different
    suitcases going around and around
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    and there's always that one suitcase left
    at the end, the one that nobody wants,
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    the one that nobody comes to claim.
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    I felt like that. I'd never felt so alone.
    I'd never felt so lost.
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    So, after coming to London,
    I did eventually resume my music career.
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    Different place but unfortunately
    the same old story.
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    I remember a message sent to me
    saying that I was going to be killed
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    and that rivers of blood were going
    to flow and that I was going to be raped
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    many times before I died.
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    By this point, I have to say,
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    I was actually getting used
    to messages like this,
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    but what became different was that
    now they started threatening my family.
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    So once again, I packed my suitcase,
    I left music and I moved to the US.
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    I'd had enough. I didn't want to have
    anything to do with this anymore.
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    And I was certainly not
    going to be killed for something
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    that wasn't even my dream --
    it was my father's choice.
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    So I kind of got lost.
    I kind of fell apart.
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    But I decided that what I wanted to do
    is spend the next however many years
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    of my life supporting young people
    and to try to be there in some small way,
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    whatever way that I could.
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    I started volunteering for various
    organizations that were working
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    with young Muslims inside of Europe.
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    And, to my surprise, what I found
    was so many of these young people
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    were suffering and struggling.
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    They were facing so many problems
    with their families and their communities
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    who seemed to care more about
    their honor and their reputation than the
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    happiness and the lives of their own kids.
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    I started feeling like maybe I wasn't
    so alone, maybe I wasn't so weird.
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    Maybe there are more of
    my people out there.
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    The thing is, what most people
    don't understand is that there are so many
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    of us growing up in Europe who
    are not free to be ourselves.
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    We're not allowed to be who we are.
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    We are not free to marry or to be in
    relationships with people that we choose.
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    We can't even pick our own career.
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    This is the norm in the
    Muslim heartlands of Europe,
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    even in the freest societies in the world,
    we're not free.
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    Our lives, our dreams, our future
    does not belong to us,
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    it belongs to our parents
    and their community.
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    I found endless stories of young people
    who are lost to all of us,
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    who are invisible to all of us but
    who are suffering
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    and they are suffering alone.
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    Kids we are losing to forced marriages,
    honor-based violence and abuse.
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    So, eventually, I realized,
    after several years of working
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    with these young people that
    I will not be able to keep running.
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    I can't spend the rest of my life
    being scared and hiding and
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    that I'm actually going
    to have to do something.
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    And I also realized that my silence,
    our silence, allows abuse
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    like this to continue.
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    So I decided that I wanted to put
    my childhood superpower to some use
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    by trying to make people on the different
    sides of these issues understand
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    what its like to be a young person stuck
    between your family and your country.
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    So I started making films
    and I started telling stories.
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    I also wanted people to understand
    the deadly consequences of us
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    not taking these problems seriously.
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    So the first film I made was about Benaz.
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    She was a 17-year-old
    Kurdish girl in London.
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    She was obedient, she did
    whatever her parents wanted.
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    She tried to do everything right.
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    She married some guy that
    her parents chose for her, even though
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    he beat and raped her constantly.
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    And when she tried to go
    to her family for help, they said,
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    well you got to go back,
    and be a better wife.
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    Because they didn't want
    a divorced daughter on their hands
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    because, of course, that would bring
    dishonor on the family.
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    She was beaten so badly
    her ears would bleed,
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    and when she finally left and she found
    a young man that she chose
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    and she fell in love with,
    the community and the family found out
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    and she disappeared.
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    She was found three months later.
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    She'd been stuffed into a suitcase
    and buried underneath the house.
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    She had been strangled,
    she had been beaten to death
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    by three men, three cousins
    on the orders of her father and uncle.
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    The added tragedy of Benaz's story
    is that she had gone to the police
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    in England five times,
    asking for help,
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    telling them that she was
    going to be killed by her family.
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    The police didn't believe her
    so they didn't do anything.
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    And the problem with this is that
    not only are so many of our kids
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    facing this problem within their families
    and within their families' communities,
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    but they're also
    meeting misunderstandings
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    and apathy in the countries
    that they grow up in.
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    When their own families betray them,
    they look to the rest of us,
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    and when we don't understand,
    we lose them.
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    So while I was making this film,
    several people said to me, well Deeyah,
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    you know, this is just their culture,
    this is just what those people do
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    to their kids and
    we can't really interfere.
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    I can assure you being murdered
    is not my culture -- you know?
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    And surely people who look like me,
    young women who come
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    from backgrounds like me,
    should be subject to the same rights,
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    the same protections as anybody else
    in our country, why not?
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    So, for my next film, I wanted to try
    and understand why some of our
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    young Muslim kids in Europe are drawn
    to extremism and violence.
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    But with that topic,
    I also recognized that
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    I was going to have to face my worst fear:
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    the brown men with beards.
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    The same men, or similar men, to the ones
    that have hounded me for most of my life.
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    Men that I've been afraid of
    most of my life.
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    Men that I've also deeply disliked,
    for many, many years.
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    So I spent the next two years
    interviewing convicted terrorists,
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    jihadis and former extremists.
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    What I already knew,
    what was very obvious already,
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    was that religion, politics,
    Europe's colonial baggage, also
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    Western foreign policy failures
    failures of recent years,
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    were all a part of the picture.
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    But what I was more interested
    in finding out was what are the human,
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    what are the personal
    reasons why some of our
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    young people are susceptible
    to groups like this.
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    And what really surprised me
    was that I found wounded human beings.
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    Instead of the monsters that I was
    looking for, that I was hoping to find --
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    quite frankly because it
    would have been very satisfying --
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    I found broken people.
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    Just like Benaz, I found that these
    young men were torn apart from trying
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    to bridge the gaps between their families
    and the countries that they were born in.
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    And what I also learned is that
    extremist groups, terrorist groups
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    are taking advantage of these
    feelings of our young people
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    and channeling that cynically,
    channeling that toward violence.
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    Come to us, they say. "Reject both sides,
    your family and your country
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    because they reject you..
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    For your family, their honor is more
    important than you and for your country,
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    a real Norwegian, Brit, or a French person
    will always be white and never you."
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    They're also promising our young people
    things that they crave:
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    significance, heroism,
    a sense of belonging and purpose,
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    a community that loves
    and accepts them.
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    They make the powerless feel powerful.
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    The invisible and the silent
    are finally seen and heard.
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    This is what they're doing
    for our young people.
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    Why are these groups doing this
    for our young people and not us?
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    The thing is, I'm not trying to justify
    or excuse any of the violence.
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    What I am trying to say is that
    we have to understand
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    why some of our young people
    are attracted to this.
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    I would like to also show you, actually,
    these are childhood photos
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    of some of the guys in the film.
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    What really struck me is
    that so many of them
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    -- I never would have thought this --
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    but so many of them have
    absent or abusive fathers.
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    And several of these young guys ended up
    finding caring and compassionate
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    father figures within
    these extremist groups.
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    I also found men brutalized
    by racist violence, but who found a way
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    to stop feeling like victims
    by becoming violent themselves.
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    In fact, I found something,
    to my horror, that I recognized.
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    I found the same feelings that I felt
    as a 17-year-old as I fled from Norway.
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    The same confusion, the same sorrow,
    the same feeling of being betrayed
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    and not belonging to anyone.
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    The same feeling of being lost
    and torn between cultures.
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    Having said that,
    I did not choose destruction,
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    I chose to pick up a camera
    instead of a gun.
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    And the reason I did that
    is because of my superpower.
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    I could see that understanding
    is the answer, instead of violence.
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    Seeing human beings with all
    their virtues and all their flaws
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    instead of continuing the caricatures:
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    the us and them,
    the villains and victims.
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    I'd also finally come to terms with the fact
    that my two cultures didn't have
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    to be on a collision course but instead
    became a space where I found my own voice.
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    I stopped feeling like I had to pick
    a side, but this took me many, many years.
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    There are so many of our young people
    today who are struggling with
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    these same issues and
    they're struggling with this alone.
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    And this leaves them open
    like wounds, and for some,
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    the worldview of radical Islam becomes
    the infection that festers
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    in these open wounds.
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    There's an African proverb that says,
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    if the young are not initiated
    into the village,
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    they will burn it down
    just to feel its warmth.
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    I would like to ask Muslim
    parents and Muslim communities,
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    will you love and care for your children
    without forcing them
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    to meet your expectations?
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    Can you choose them instead of your honor?
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    Can you understand why they're so angry
    and alienated when you put your honor
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    before their happiness?
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    Can you try to be a friend to your child
    so that they can trust you
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    and want to share with you
    their experiences, rather than having
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    to seek it somewhere else?
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    And to our young people, tempted
    by extremism, can you acknowledge that
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    your rage is fueled by pain?
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    Will you find the strength to resist those
    cynical old men who want to use
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    your blood for their own profits?
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    Can you find a way to live?
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    Can you see that the sweetest revenge
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    is for you to live a happy,
    full and free life?
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    A life defined by you and nobody else.
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    Why do you want to become
    just another dead Muslim kid?
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    And for the rest of us, when will we start
    listening to our young people?
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    How can we support them
    in re-directing their pain
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    into something more constructive?
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    They think we don't like them.
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    They think we don't care
    what happens to them.
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    They think we don't accept them.
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    Can we find a way to make
    them feel differently?
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    What will it take for us to see them
    and notice them before they become
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    either the victims or
    the perpetrators of violence?
  • 18:25 - 18:29
    Can we make ourselves care about them
    and consider them to be our own?
  • 18:29 - 18:33
    And not just be outraged when the victims
    of violence look like ourselves?
  • 18:34 - 18:39
    Can we find a way to reject hatred
    and heal the divisions between us?
  • 18:39 - 18:43
    The thing is, we cannot afford to give up
    on each other or on our kids,
  • 18:43 - 18:45
    even if they've given up on us.
  • 18:46 - 18:48
    We are all in this together.
  • 18:48 - 18:52
    And in the long term, revenge and violence
    will not work against extremists.
  • 18:54 - 18:59
    Terrorists want us to huddle in our houses
    in fear, closing our doors and our hearts.
  • 19:00 - 19:05
    They want us to tear open more wounds
    in our societies so that they can use them
  • 19:05 - 19:06
    to spread their infection more widely.
  • 19:09 - 19:14
    They want us to become like them:
    intolerant, hateful and cruel.
  • 19:15 - 19:20
    The day after the Paris attacks, a friend
    of mine sent this photo of her daughter.
  • 19:21 - 19:24
    This is a white girl and an Arab girl.
  • 19:24 - 19:26
    They're best friends.
  • 19:26 - 19:29
    This image is kryptonite for extremists.
  • 19:32 - 19:36
    These two little girls with
    their superpowers are showing
  • 19:36 - 19:39
    the way forward towards a society
    that we need to build together,
  • 19:40 - 19:46
    a society that includes and supports,
    rather than rejects our kids.
  • 19:48 - 19:52
    Thank you for listening.
Title:
What we don't know about Europe's Muslim kids
Speaker:
Deeyah Khan
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
20:11

English subtitles

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